8/19/2010

Why Glenn Beck Ought to Be Repeatedly Cock-Punched (Latter-Day Saints Edition):Last night, on Glenn Beck Licks His Own Taint on Fox "news," our pudgy host with the tin foil-colored hair was on the verge of going the full Mormon. In the course of another of his incoherent rambles, the kinds of streams of consciousness that'd make James Joyce say, "Whoa, that shit doesn't makes sense," stately, plump Glenn Beck promised that he was a-gonna rock our worlds about the history of the United States. Why? Because "Divine Providence happened here. This is what was happening in America between 1730 and 1840." Which is damn convenient, since Joseph Smith wrote and published the Book of Mormon in that time.

Beck mixed in something about how Indians were thought of as savages, Manifest Destiny, Enlightenment thought, and a bunch of names. One might think of it as a yummy gumbo of information if the stock wasn't made of crazy juice spiked with bullshit. Eventually, he got around to defending Indians by saying that he's going to show us "the history that has been erased by science and the Smithsonian." Aw, sweet Brigham Young's testicle hair, finally a conspiracy theory to pin this shit on.

And then this deranged motherfucker starts throwing nutzoid stuff at you like Agent Mulder on acid: the Newark Earthworks in Ohio, an ancient Hopewell tribe burial site where some archaeologist said he found a carved stone with the Ten Commandments on it. "Mainstream archaeologists still dismiss the findings. They found it in Israel and they found it in Ohio. But there was another stone that they found that they couldn't argue," Beck offered.

And then he introduced us to another rock with some Hebrewish gobbledy-gook on it, a stone found in Tennessee with what is known as the "Bat Creek Inscription." It's all part of a history that "the Smithsonian, science, government, commerce colluded to erase." The part that Beck doesn't state is that this is significant because Mormons believe that Indians are descended from a Hebrew tribe that crossed the ocean to America in ancient times, bringing their Hebrewy language with 'em. Lamanites, they're called in their good book. And that the Earthworks, with its seeming association with the Egyptian pyramids, the Decalogue stone, and the Bat Creek thing prove it.

(Just as an aside, the Rude Pundit should say here that he doesn't think that any one religion is any more batshit insane than any other, that they are all based on stuff what they interpret to be magical. You wanna believe that Jesus came to Boise or whatever? Fine. It's all made up shit, so why not just make shit up?)

According to Beck, "The history - the history that has been erased in our nation and, in particular, with the Native Americans, happened because it didn't fit the story they created - manifest destiny. It only works if the Indians were savages. And they had to have savages for commerce and government to expand. The ancient artifacts prove otherwise. Why aren't we looking into those?"

By the way, the artifacts are bullshitfrauds, the 19th century version of a kid in a balloon. Yeah, there is a hell of a lot of erased history. Hebrew tribes in America ain't part of it.

And Beck's goal here? Well, considering the confused mish-mash of things what sound real and things what aren't, it sure seems a bit like proselytizing on Fox's dime, like he's trying to convert people. Or, you know, brainwash 'em.

(Note: Four more chances to see the Rude Pundit's new play, Heterosexuals, at the New York International Fringe Theatre Festival:Thursday, August 19 at 2 pmSaturday, August 21 at 10 pmMonday, August 23 at 8 pmWednesday, August 25 at 2 pm